Original Art For Sale

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Saturday Was A Creative Day. . .

I literally spent the WHOLE DAY in my studio yesterday! I didn't feel great when I woke up and art is my therapy so I headed off to the studio. It worked like a charm! I felt better by the afternoon and accomplished a couple of things. Today I thought I'd share these accomplishments with you. . .

First off is a new entry for my art journal. I'm calling this "My Constant Struggle".

As I have said before God and I are on a journey together right now - He is teaching me some lessons. He is also bringing to mind certain scriptures and I have been making art with them to help me focus on what He is telling me. Friday while I was in the shower (praying) Romans 7:18 - 20 came to mind. Although at the time I didn't know it was Romans 7:18 - 20, I had to look it up. And even though I do not think I am "evil" I do struggle with making time to really study His Word and pray. These are things I really want to do but for some reason I get distracted and do other things. This is one of those things He is working with me on this journey of ours. So this is the art I made to remind myself of this lesson. . .

I looked for an image in my books and online that depicted the struggle between good & evil as my foundation. I found this cool image of Jesus and the devil arm wrestling! The devil was very bright and almost became the focal point of the image (which I didn't want) so I made him a little more opaque and printed the scripture over top of him (I did all of this in PSE - super simple editing). I also wanted the devil side to be darker than the Jesus side it is hard to tell in the photo but the left side is almost all black.

I had gotten a little crazy with myself and added the verses before and after the ones He had put in my heart. But as I worked on the page I realized that only 18 - 20 were the words I needed. So I painted over all of the words with gesso and then used a baby wipe to remove the gesso from the verses I wanted to really be read. You can still read the rest, they just aren't as clear. Then I also added some paint lines with the edge of a gift card above and below to further highlight the verses. You can see all of this in the photo below.

I also painted gesso over the image of Jesus and wiped away the gesso on His face, head and hand. I also hand cut a heart from the background of the devil image that had lightening bolts and put it on Jesus. I did this for a couple of reasons - I needed to bring some of that red color into this side of the image and I loved the lightening bolts (symbolizing His the power of His love) and I also liked taking part of the devils background to show how God loves us so much He bears our "evil" so we don't have to!

All of these little details and symbolism is really just for me - but I want to share it with you so you can see how I go about expressing myself through this creative process - hopefully to encourage you to give it a try and truly "connect" to your art and not just have it be "something to do".

When I am using scripture in my art I try to add the actual verse from my "art Bible" (the one I tear up) in the background - making the actual scripture the foundation of my art. So there are several pages from Romans in the background . I made sure that the opening page/title page (not sure what you call it) from Romans remained visible. I then stamped a big #7 next to it and then smaller 18-20 stamps going the opposite direction next to the 7 so that the scripture "address" would be noted on the page.

This is what the original image looked like when I found it. It is a cool image - very powerful yet a little gruesome when you look at the devil close up. I hope I never have to really "see him"!!!!

Okay - time to switch gears. . . After working in my art journal (and then cooking dinner for the family) I started on this for my Monkey. She starts school this week!!!!! Amazing how fast that came about! Well, monkey has never gone to pre-school or day-care, she's always been with me. So she is understandably a little nervous about starting school - excited too but still nervous. So her Mom is hosting a little "Going to School" party for her today. We are all bring her some of the supplies on her school list and Bryanna is "packing" lunches for us in brown paper sacks for the food. It is just immediate family coming and meant just to encourage her and get her excited about school.

I bought her supplies a couple of weeks ago but wasn't sure how I wanted to wrap them for her. Last night about 9:30pm I got the idea do one of the book boxes I am "famous" for. But the supplies wouldn't all fit in the ones I had. What to do. . . Ahhh - I have a stack of Club Scrap "pizza boxes" in the garage that my friend Judie gave me. The supplies fit perfectly in there! So I painted the whole box black first and then started adding some of the G-45 ABC Primer papers and embellishments to it. Super cute! And super easie too!

I mounted the main image on black presentation board for some depth as well as several of the fun chipboard pieces from the collection. I didn't want brads going through the box so I just added a little red thread knot to some tiny black buttons and glued them to the chipboard tags in the brad hole.

Of course I lined the inside of the box too.

I even embellished her school supplies with Little tags and "this book belongs to" labels from the collection.

It fits so nicely in the box and just looks like "FUN"! I figure Bryanna could save it to put her school papers in if she wants to.

So, I guess I should go get my shower taken so I wont be late to Monkey's party - Gonna take my camera and get some pictures today - trying not to be "bad Amma" anymore!
Have a great week friends - do something creative just for YOU!
Till we meet again. . . .